You’ve heard it before—ninety percent of the players who sign professional baseball contracts will never play an inning in a major league game. That’s a staggering number. We all know that becoming a professional athlete is rare, but what is the difference between the ten percent that make it to The Show, and the ninety percent that don’t? Think about it. That ten percent of players that make it to the bigs aren’t more talented. [...]

Do you remember when Citi Field opened the Mets vowed they they were going to build around pitching and defense? Then, they immediately signed Jason Bay, who played well defensively, but that wasn’t the point. Enter Matt den Dekker, who doesn’t have the inside track at making the team as the center fielder despite being the their best defensive outfielder. Terry Collins managed arguably one of the greatest defensive center fielders in history when he had Jim Edmonds. [...]

I enjoy researching starting pitching for any reason whatsoever, so looking into them for fantasy purposes was more fun than anything else. Today brings about a top ten list for the starting pitchers out there – and unfortunately, will not feature many surprises. The best starting pitchers out there are fairly well defined at this point, but I still dove into ESPN and Yahoo! rankings just to make sure I was not off base here. [...]

Rounding The Bases is back… As we did before, we’ll highlight some of the must-read posts from the Mets beat writers, take a cruise around the Mets blogosphere, check in on our enemies, and have a little fun while we’re at it. MMO Instant Replay Connor O’Brien dished out his report cards for the Mets infielders this week and gives Josh Thole a big fat D. “Josh Thole has not become the player we thought [...]

I am reminded of that Christmas song…”it’s the most wonderful time of the year.” It doesn’t get any better than playoff time. I’m bummed that the Mets aren’t playing significant baseball again this fall, but I guess it does give us an opportunity to sit back and enjoy these games and celebrate this great game of baseball, without the stress of having our team’s fate on the line. Anyway, here are a few things to [...]

The season is winding down, and it’s time for me to pick out the FirstPitchMitch All-Stars. The FPM All-Stars are like the All-Madden team of baseball – they are the best of the best. When this team steps in to the stadium the skies open up, and the baseball gods marvel at their creation. Without further ado, I present the first ever FPM All-Stars…  Catcher – Yadier Molina Yadier narrowly edged out Buster Posey simply [...]

Mike Trout is having a season for the ages. The kind of season that has baseball fans checking the box score in the newspaper to see what he did the night before, and team executives scratching their heads wondering how they missed on this kid. If you turned on ESPN last year, the only time you would hear the word trout, was during one of those outdoors shows. It’s funny how things change in a [...]